Who’s running this show, anyway?
Some campaigns can work just fine starting with a local town, a local dungeon, and working out from there. Eventually the PCs will learn of non-local stuff and move on. In fact, this can work quite well as long as the PCs are the primary focus of the campaign and works best if the world revolves around the PCs.
There’s another way, though. A campaign can still focus on the story of the PCs, but have them (at least at the start) be only a small part of the setting itself. For this to work, there needs to be other stories, other plots, going on around them for the PCs to interact with.
For that, you need Movers and Shakers: influential entities with plots and plans of their own. Not everything needs to be associated with the Movers and Shakers, and many things won’t be obviously linked to a Mover and Shaker, but this style of campaign works best if these entities exist.
In your campaign, who are the Movers and Shakers? What do they do? What plots do they have in the works? How can they be supported or suppressed? Are they known to the PCs? Are the PCs known to them?
Who’s running this show, anyway?
And now, a first post in the carnival: Movers and Shakers: The Hall of Infamy
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Great article here. I see it fits in with the Hall of Infamy idea, even, and she’s right out front and center. She reminds me a little of the Lady of Pain from the Planescape setting.
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Woo-hoo! I’m gonna follow this; I can only guess we’ll be getting a lot of inspiring articles from all around the world(s)! I’ll do two, each for one of my currently-running campaigns. Here’s the first one, set in Eberron:
http://codexanathema.com/2019/07/11/all-souls/
Machinations and manipulations, I like it. I’m looking forward to reading more.
And I just finished a second article, introducing the Ravnican Apocalypse in the making.
http://codexanathema.com/2019/07/23/the-cat-among-the-pigeons/
I never got hugely into Magic the Gathering, but I do remember the feeling of So. Many. Slivers.
I can see how this could be the basis of very bad things happening.
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https://brynvalk.wordpress.com/2019/07/17/mover-and-shakers-of-faustus-kil/ I send to thee a host of NPCs encountered in several games I am in: both as a player and primarily as the omnipresent Dungeon Master. Personally, Jezzu the Brass Dragon fortune teller gave me the most difficulty in making if not just for formatting alone.
Some of these are less powerful than I usually consider when thinking of ‘movers and shakers’, but even if they move only small things short distances, they still count.
And the idea of a kitsune fairy tickles me mightily.
These recurring characters are wonderful. Literally so; I rarely see descriptions of recurring NPCs that make me go “cool, I want to play in this game!”… and 5e isn’t even in my top three preferred system.
Thank you, this was a delightful read this morning. My colleagues are puzzled, I don’t usually smile like this.
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Here’s my entry for the carnival, a major mega-corp that I use in my game as both opposition and employment for the PCs.
http://expandingfrontier.com/2019/07/the-streel-mega-corp/
Thanks Tom, I enjoyed reading this and I’m pleased it looks like it could become a regular feature on your blog.
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